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'Here and Now' companion podcast features Portlanders talking about race, identity and belonging

Updated February 21, 2018 at 8:48 AM;Posted February 20, 2018 at 4:13 PM

Sosie Bacon and Jerrika Hinton in the Portland-set HBO series, "Here and Now." A companion podcast, "Where Do You Exist?" features stories recorded in Portland, and includes reflections on living in the city feeling acutely aware of being a person of color. (HBO)

If you've seen the first couple episodes of "Here and Now," the HBO series set and partially filmed in Portland, it makes perfect sense that its companion podcast is called "Where Do You Exist?"

That title parallels the themes of identity, relationships and sense of place explored in "Here and Now."

The HBO series, created by Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under") stars Tim Robbins and Holly Hunter as a progressive Portland couple who adopted children -- who are now adults -- from Vietnam, Liberia and Colombia, and who have one biological child, a 17-year-old.

When one of the grown children begins having strange visions, he visits a psychiatrist, who himself has conflicted emotions about his youth in Iran and his wife and son's devotion to their Muslim faith.

"Here and Now" features characters trying to understand who they are, and where they fit into their family, and contemporary culture.

The six-part podcast miniseries, "Where Do You Exist?" features storytellers sharing their own experiences with belonging and feeling alienated. The podcast episodes were recorded in Portland, Los Angeles and New York.

The first two podcast episodes feature speakers recorded in Portland. The event was held at Union/Pine the evening of Jan. 30.

The speakers discussed their own experiences, including life as a person of color, being gay or lesbian, the challenges of trying to get into college as an undocumented immigrant and what it feels like to be "an other" within a community.

Valdivia, for example, said she had never felt "non-white" before moving to Portland, where she's considered "capital B brown." People in Portland talk about race all the time, though it's "painfully well-intentioned," Valdivia said.

Despite living in a city that's overwhelmingly white, Valdivia said, she doesn't think of herself as defined by race. Instead, she said, she's a lesbian, an intellectual, she's opinionated, and she's into shoes and carbohydrates.